Apple is poised to kill its 'Connect' social network for music

When Apple Music was launched last summer, Apple enlisted
rap superstar Drake to come onstage and promote Connect, a
music-focused social network built to give fans "a single
place to connect with your favorite artists."

"The dream of being a new artist, like myself five years ago, and
connecting directly with an audience has never been more
close than right now," Drake said. "Instead of having to post
your stuff on all these different and sometimes confusing places,
it all lives in one very simple, very easy place, and that's
Connect."

Less than a year later, Apple seems poised to end its second
music-focused social media network. Mark
Gurman at 9to5Mac says that sources tell him that
Apple will demote Connect from its premium placement within the
Apple Music App. In addition, Connect is most likely not going to
get new features this year.

The report says that Connect's not dead, but its hard not to see
parallels with iTunes Ping, Apple's last attempt
at a social network, launched in 2010. It failed to gain traction
and was killed two years later. "We tried Ping and the
customer voted and said, this isn't something I want to put a lot
of energy into. Some customers love it, but there's not a huge
number that do," Apple CEO Tim Cook
said in 2012.

Although I'm an Apple Music subscriber and daily user, I rarely
visit the Connect tab, and it's not difficult to see that the
service hasn't been the success Apple hoped it was going to
be. It's a bit of a ghost town.

Even though I'm "following" 36 artists, only Drake and Blink-182
are directly posting updates, and the number of likes and
comments range from the double to triple digits.

Compare that to Instagram, where very similar posts get
thousands of likes within minutes.

At the very least, Apple's vision of a Soundcloud competitor
seems to have been unsuccessful. Few if any indie artists have
gone to a Connect-first distribution strategy, and even when
Drake released a few high-profile "diss" songs last fall,
they were posted
on Soundcloud even though they premiered on Apple's
online radio station.

Drake's latest album, however, remains an Apple Music exclusive.
Apple Music currently has 13 million paying subscribers,
according to Apple, and will get a major "reboot" this
June.